ENG14IA013 · Raytheon Aircraft Company 400A A
Georgia Jet Raytheon Aircraft Company 400A A · Incident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure during takeoff
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG14IA013
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Incident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Unknown
Raytheon Aircraft Company 400A A
- Aircraft type
- Raytheon 400
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N412GJ
- Operator
- Georgia Jet
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor Possible conflict
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The No. 2 engine sustained a yellow-crowned night-heron birdstrike during takeoff roll from Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR)- Sugar Land, Texas. The impact from the birdstrike resulted in contact between the fan and inlet case that separated all nineteen (19) fan blades. The released blade fragments penetrated the engine case and cowl and caused an engine fire. A blade fragment impacted the right wing and punctured the fuel tank resulting in fuel spillage onto the wing surface and runway. Materials analysis on recovered fan blade fragments determined that all separated blades failed due to overload and no evidence of fatigue was identified. A series of modal tests including: tap hammer, high energy shaker, and computer model simulation were conducted at the system and component level. The tests identified a four nodal diameter coincidence at about 72% N1 speed. When sufficient energy is imparted to the engine fan during a foreign object ingestion event like a birdstrike, it may result in a rub induced excitation and subsequent fan blade separation and catastrophic engine failure.
Probable cause
The probable cause of the uncontained No. 2 engine failure on the Raytheon Beechjet 400A was a yellow-crowned night-heron birdstrike that resulted in fan blade contact with the inlet case and rub induced excitation of a previously unidentified natural frequency (resonance) within the engine operating range.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG14IA013
- Event ID
- 20140515X31544
- Case number
- ENG14IA013
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c60e5bec8451ec025127e9144e12d2c9bd041e8af8cb3166f09166d7ed5ffef5; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:37:37.001Z.